“To get better you have to get worse” – Inside This Week’s NME

In his Paris studio, Peter Doherty exposes his physical and emotional scars to NME after a decade of narcotic abuse – but how did a near-death experience kick-start the new Babyshambles album ‘Sequel To The Prequel’? How did Pete’s stint in Thai rehab help him out? And why did Morrissey call him from his hospital bed?

GOD COMPLEX? WHO, MEEZUS?
Music history is littered with the clearly-not-immortal corpses of musicians who considered themselves equal only to a fictional superhero in the sky. So what makes Kanye West’s God complex more admirable than, say, Richard Ashcroft’s? NME dissects the art and folly of the rock’n’roll messiah…

GRUNGE GIANTS
From Nirvana and Mudhoney to The Postal Service, Fleet Foxes, No Age, Beach House and, um, Flight Of The Concords, Seattle’s Sub Pop has been changing the rock and indie world for twenty-five years, spawning grunge, creating the new wave of US pastoral indie folk and sticking by their stoner guns through a plethora of hard times. NME goes behind the scenes of the coolest US label ever…

“THEY’RE LIKE TAME IMPALA WITH A 13-INCH DICK…”
That’ll be Pond then, Nick Allbrook’s Zep-rocking psych offshoot from Tame Impala, about to release their stupendous mini-album ‘Hobo Rocket’. But why did he leave Tame for these even obscurer waters? Why does he suffer from a “diarrhea flow of cynicism”? And how did he end up recording with an escaped psychiatric patient called Cowboy John?

“WE HAVE A SIXTH SENSE…”
NME gets inside the warped electro-heads that sound-tracked the Olympic flag-raising, write music to accompany “the collapse of civilization” and claim to construct their music by telepathy. They are Fuck Buttons, or F* Buttons to your mum, and they’re living ”a bit of a fairytale”

/>SPOT-DEFY?
With Thom Yorke withdrawing his solo music from Spotify claiming that the service didn’t pay artists enough, NME investigates the mother of all streaming services – is it a rip-off or the future of music? Does it help or hinder new acts? And just how many Spotify plays will earn you the princely sum of £42 (clue, it’s a LOT)?